14 problems only vegans understand

1. Group dinners are a hell that almost always results in the consumption of a side salad. The number of times I’ve had someone point to the menu and say, “Ooo, here’s something you can eat! They have a side salad” and I wanted to laugh-cry into their face while slowly exiting the building is way too many times. No one wants that tiny-arse bowl of iceberg lettuce. No one.

2. Feeling like a monster when you bring out your head-sized bowl of dinner while they’re eating a small plate of meat. Look, vegan food isn’t as filling as a brick of meat and that’s part of why we love it. It means we get to eat a massive bowl of awesome food for an hour, while you’re eating a super tiny corpse that’s gone in three minutes. Don’t judge our food bowls and we won’t judge your corpses.

3. Having a guy offer to take you to dinner and wondering if he’ll secretly hate you when you tell him you’re vegan. As soon as I like a guy I immediately start worrying if he’ll think it’s annoying that I’m vegan because where the hell will we eat dinner. This has literally never materialised as a problem but I fear it just the same.

4. When your friends wave a burger in front of you like you’re a married man and the burger is a hot single lady you wish you could sleep with. I am happily married to my decisions, thank you. Plus, your burger looks more like a boot on the side of the road than a hot single lady-temptation because I feel nothing but sadness and indifference when I see it.

5. When people use the fact that you’re vegan as an excuse to bring up the names of all of the vegans they’ve hated in their lifetime. The speech usually sounds like, “No offence, but most vegans I’ve known have tried to push it on me and it’s like, I don’t need your judgment.” First of all, I doubt that has ever happened to you. Second, I would never ever do that, so you must chill.

6. Having guys tell you they never would’ve expected you to be vegan, as though it’s some horrible disease. What these guys usually mean is, “It’s so weird that you’re vegan because you seemed like a Cool Girl who just eats burgers and fries and chills with a beer.” And the thing is, you can be a Cool Girl who eats all that crap, but yours doesn’t have any meat in it. Also, screw these guys.

7. When people get super self-conscious about eating around you because they worry you’ll judge them, when really you just want to quietly eat kale alongside them. I couldn’t care less about whether or not you’re eating eggs and honestly, I did not even notice you were eating eggs until you made it weird.

8. When someone brings you something edible as a way of saying “thank you” but they didn’t know you were vegan and now you have this box of crap you can’t eat. The worst is when they want to eat the food item with you and you have to weigh the pros and cons of a chew-and-spit or telling them you’re vegan and making them sad because you can’t eat their present. I usually say I just ate because any other reality is too awkward and heartbreaking for me.

9. Having your relatives ask you if you’re “still doing that vegan thing.” Being vegan is not Carmen Electra’s Aerobic Striptease workout from 2004. Plus, I’ve been doing that “thing” since I was a teenager so it’s probably a done deal at this point.

10. When people expect a life-changing “And then I knew, once and for all, that I could never harm these precious creatures again” story about how you became vegan and all you have to offer them is “I think meat is gross, so I stopped eating it.”

11. Trying to find a restaurant that has vegan options but won’t make your friends feel like they’re trapped in a hippie loincloth flaxseed hell. Why is it so hard to find a place where I can eat something more than the aforementioned iceberg nightmare and my friends won’t feel like they’ve crawled inside a Woodstock flashback full of white people with dreadlocks?

12. Being lectured about how much protein you’re getting by someone who exclusively eats lasagne. Thank you for your opinion, Jake, but please shut your mouth. Your proteinless dinner is falling out of it and I’d hate to see that go to waste.

13. Having to hear someone’s self-righteous “Yeah, I tried being vegan for a while, but it didn’t work for me” story. I get that some people try being vegan for various reasons and then it doesn’t work out for various reasons, but I really don’t need to hear your passive aggressive story about why my life is a lie.

14. When people confuse you for a vegetarian and try to hand you a burrito with cheese and eggs in it and you want to be like, “We’ve talked about this and…” but instead you just mumble something about having eaten a big lunch and never hang out with them again.